Cartier! Wedding dresses! Rhubarb! A play! Telly! Love! Lauren Sánchez's space hair!

In quite a combative mood today. Must be the weather?

I snuck into the press preview of the Cartier exhibition last week. I’m extremely lucky to be on the list of journalists who gets invited to press previews at the V&A, but I quite often think ‘Hmmm, I can’t justify going into town that morning, abandoning Dennis, to drift around that exhibition when I’m not an art critic.’ So I don’t go. But the Cartier one is a big one, one of the blockbuster exhibitions of the year, so I decided Dennis would have to fend for himself and off I went.

And I say this as someone who isn’t even that excitable about jewellery. I like it. I love the rings and earrings that I wear everyday. But, in the past, I’ve also sat around while certain girlfriends discussed the shape and size of the diamond they were after for their engagement ring and thought ‘You know when the Pankhursts were campaigning for the vote? I’m not sure they meant you.’

That said, the Cartier exhibition is mad. In a good way. Diamonds the size of eyeballs! Sapphires like plums! Rubies as big as strawberries, and so on and so on. Also, an entire ROOM of tiaras. You may not even think you’re that into tiaras. You may think they’re a shiny bit of frippery largely worn by the Royals when they get married, but then you go into this room and become a human magpie. They’ve displayed them very cleverly - in glass cases with lights sweeping constantly around the outside of the room in a circle, so different angles of the tiaras gleam and show up at different moments.

What I loved was the social history. One particularly silly emerald necklace was commissioned by Countess Granard, one of the Dollar Princesses, daughter of a rich New York financier who came over here and bagged her British toff in 1909. Nearby was the most OTT necklace I have ever seen, made by Cartier in 1928, for the Maharajah of Patalia. Five strands; 2930 diamonds, and certainly not the kind of thing you’d wear on the Tube. (Smaller necks back then, I kept thinking, as I wandered around and peered at the shiny necklaces. Dainty little 1920s necks.) There were tiger bracelets commissioned by the Duchess of Windsor. A whole section devoted to the Egyptomania of the 1920s, after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, including a scarab beetle belt-buckle made from sapphires and diamonds, owned by Cole Porter’s wife.

Also, a couple of pieces owned by the Qatari Sheikh I wrote about the other day (in THIS POST HERE, scroll to the bottom), which reminded me of the fact that, while interviewing him, I happened to mention that my godfather had given me a string of Cartier pearls as a christening present, but I rarely wore them and they were at home, cloistered in their velvet case. Sheikh Hamad was visibly horrified by this, because pearls like being worn otherwise they discolour. He instructed me to go home immediately, take them out and put them beside a glass of water to rehydrate them. So I did exactly as he said, took the pearls out, and left them by a glass of water in my bedroom as if they were a thirsty pet.

‘I’m blown away by literally everything,’ a woman standing nearby murmured to someone else during the preview. ‘I don’t know where to look!’ And I felt the same; there is so much glitter and shine in this exhibition - over 350 pieces - that by the end I felt almost sick, a bit like I did during the marmalade tasting weekend. Stendhal syndrome, maybe. So I went to fortify myself with a coffee in the good if wildly expensive V&A tearoom.

The only thing I would grumble about is everyone else there. Ok no, not everyone. But some of the influencers. This is one of those fashionable exhibitions which is going to draw fashionable people, and those who want to stick every single piece up on social media. I know, hypocrite! I stuck a couple of photos up last week, too. But what I didn’t do was hog the front of every cabinet for several minutes, making sure I’d got the perfect shot, barging other people out of the way to get it (that’s why my pictures, below, are quite ropey. Because I snapped them as quick as I could and moved on. And also because no photos could really do this exhibition justice. You have to see them irl.)

Scarab beetle; the Duchess of Windsor's tigers; Countess Granard's quite silly emerald necklace; the Maharajah's subtle little number.

So, if and when you go, brace yourself for sharp elbows and a dementing number of people looking at every piece through their phone screen. It was the same with the van Gogh exhibition in the autumn - punters queuing to take a selfie with the sunflowers. I sound NINETY BILLIONS YEARS OLD saying this, I know. But it was quite annoying. I think tickets are already in short supply, but if you can’t get them for a few months, that may be a good thing because it will allow the initial HYSTERIA to die down a bit.

Pictures of the week

Long story short, I didn’t wear the Shirley Bassey jumpsuit for my friend Alex’s very gorgeous wedding on Saturday, but hired this dress instead. Which was just as well because the weather was GLORIOUS, and if I’d worn a gold sequin jumpsuit I might have ended up dangerously dehydrated. This is from a label called Borgo de Nor, which I’d never come across, but it was SO light and comfortable. They seem to do v pretty patterned dresses and suits if you’re after something like this, although ££££, so worth looking into hiring. Disclaimer: I had actually ironed the dress before putting it on but the iron may not have been hot enough.

Also, what’s changed since I last hired anything is the delivery method. Hurr sent me this in a little zip-up black case, with a sticky label to simply slap on it for sending it back. See below. COULD not be easier. All I did was drop the below back at the post office yesterday morning.

I stopped off at a little farm shop just outside Witney on the way back from the wedding. One Elm Farm Shop, it was called, and it was entirely self-service. You step into the shop, help yourself to lamb or steaks or sausages or vegetables or fresh eggs or jams etc etc, and then simply zap it yourself with a barcode reader at the till, and tap your card or phone to the card reader. Easy peasy. I grabbed eggs, a bag of fat, fresh hot cross buns because I was hungover and needed something sugary and starchy, and a huge bunch of rhubarb, which I took home and stewed with sugar, star anise and a cinnamon stick. I also threw in a spoonful of rose water, which wasn’t in the recipe, but I spied the bottle in my cupboard and thought it might make it quite Ottolenghi?? I’d never stewed rhubarb before but COR is it easy. Took all of 15 minutes, and now I have a great big bowl of it in the fridge to perk up my yoghurt and brazil nuts every morning. The rose water is faint, I would say, but detectable. Anyway, it's rhubarb season, so I’m just flagging this as a nice, easy thing if you fancy it.

Recommendations of the Week

1. Punch. Quick sticks, there’s only another two weeks of this run at the Young Vic. Written by James Graham (Sherwood, Dear England, Ink, and roughly 362 other terrific things), it’s the story a 19-year-old who kills another young man with a single punch on the streets of Nottingham one night. A true story, as it happens, and the themes - male violence, a decaying ‘system’, boys, men, parents, justice, retribution - feel even more relevant at a time when another smash hit (Adolescence) has addressed similar recently. And it feels a tiny bit basic to go ‘Oooh look, something else about toxic masculinity. It must be a trend!’ but there we go. Don’t blame me. Blame Andrew Tate. Punch is very moving, very brilliant and the cast (Julie Hesmondhalgh as the wrecked but deeply compassionate mother of the man who was killed: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) seem to move effortlessly from devastating to quick, funny asides. I cried twice and hadn’t thought to take a tissue, so kept surreptitiously wiping my nose with the back on my thumb, which is a really good look as a grown-up at the theatre. It’s transferring to the West End in September if you can’t make it before it finishes here. Remember a tissue.

2. What They Found. Oof, this is the Sam Mendes-directed documentary featuring footage from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, which was exactly 80 years ago today - 15 April, 1945. It’s entirely made up of silent black and white footage shot at the time by two British sergeants, Sgt Mike Lewis and Sgt Bill Lawrie. The pair were later interviewed and their description of the camp, and what they found, is laid over the top. It’s short, just 36 minutes, but as one reviewer has suggested, surely features among the most disturbing images ever shown on British television. It’s a brutal thing to watch and I feel uncomfortable about describing the footage here, in a jolly newsletter, so I won’t. Nor do I want to reduce the significance or horror of the thing by making some trite observation between fascism then and now. I just do strongly recommend it. On BBC2, so on iPlayer.

3. Janice Turner, one of the many queens of The Times, wrote such a lovely column on Saturday in praise of long marriages. It was pegged to Charles and Camilla’s 20th wedding anniversary, and there was a particular passage in it about the shared little jokes that couples develop over the years, which made me feel quite wistful.

She also made a good point about divorce. ‘When I read that 42 per cent of marriages fail, I think: but 58 per cent succeed!’

I won’t regurgitate the whole thing, it’s HERE if you want to read it. I’m seeing a very lovely man who often chides me for being extremely (overly?) romantic, but I’m determined to remain so despite my various dramas. We need a bit of romance in our lives, I reckon. Especially right now. This piece is for those of you in the same camp.

Nonsense of the Week

If you were going into space, on a rocket, boldly going where nobody etc etc, who would you want as your team leader? A NASA astronaut? Bear Grylls? Ben Fogle? Someone who, at the very least, knows the difference between the Sun and Uranus?

I’m not entirely sure that I’d want this person to be the future Mrs Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sánchez, the woman who forgot to wear a top to the American inauguration.

Sánchez led her female troupe into space yesterday, all dressed in matching spacesuits designed by the creative directors of Oscar de la Renta. Others in the girl gang included Katy Perry and Gayle King. You may have seen the coverage. There was quite a bit of it.

Before lift off, journalist Kate Maltby went on Radio 4 and argued that this may not have been quite the step for feminism that some people were claiming. It was gimmicky, Kate argued, a PR launch for Bezos’s space project, with Sánchez only there because she was the partner of a rich man. True, Kate allowed, there were other women on the mission who’ve achieved much more - notably Vietnamese-American activist Amanda Nguyen, who helped change the sexual assault law in America after she was raped aged 22, and former Nasa scientist Aisha Bowe. ‘But the message this is sending to girls is you don’t need to be an astronaut or study science, [to go to space], you need to hook up with Jeff Bezos.’

The six women did a joint interview with Elle to publicise their mission, and the magazine noted that it would be the first time anyone had gone to space with their hair and make-up done. ‘Who wouldn’t get glam before the flight?’ Sánchez said, before Perry chipped in, ‘Space is going to finally be glam…We’re going to put the ass in astronaut.’ Hmmm. Imagine if there is intelligent life out there. Imagine them being confronted with those two, wafting Elnett about the place.

Back on Earth yesterday, celebrities including Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian watched the 11-minute flight from an observation platform. Not clear why they were there. ‘Khloe and Kris, you gonna go up there?’ gushed one of the TV presenters. ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians - in space! ‘ gurgled another. As publicity exercises go, they smashed it, but I’m with Kate on the idea that this was in any way a feminist event.

I also find something about space tourism quite grim in general, and billionaires falling over themselves to go there. A bit like the rich paying to go down to Titanic or be carted up Everest by a huge gang of sherpas for bragging rights. What’s wrong with a nice holiday in Italy or Cumbria? Being that rich must be quite unrestful, I think sometimes. Or am I being ESPECIALLY po-faced today?